Natalie Santizo

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Natalie Santizo

Natalie Santizo

Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor

Cohort 2016-17

Office: 7349 Bunche Hall

Email: nsantizo@g.ucla.edu

Biography

Natalie Santizo is an interdisciplinary historian from Baldwin Park, California. Her dissertation “Critical Latinx Foodways: Racial Formation, Regional Identity, and Placemaking in the San Gabriel Valley, 1900-1968,” exists at the intersection of Chicana/o Studies, History, Racial Geographies, and Food Studies. She is concerned with understanding how foodways—the production, consumption, and distribution of foods and food goods over time—have shaped Latinx placemaking and survival in the San Gabriel Valley.

Currently, Natalie is a UC President’s Postdoc at UC Merced. In Fall 2023, she will begin an Assistant Professor position at San Diego State University under the department of Chicana/Chicano Studies.

Education

  • Ph.D. Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2022
  • M.A. Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 2019
  • M.S. Justice Studies, Arizona State University, 2016
  • B.A. Psychology and Sociology, University of Southern California, 2014

Research

  • Natalie Santizo is an alumni Ph.D. student in Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
  • Her research focuses on mapping Latina/o/x foodways-the production, consumption, and distribution of foods and foodstuffs- and San Gabriel Valley History in the early 20th century
  • Utilizing local archives, primary documents, oral history, and GIS mapping, Natalie focuses on Latino farmer-entrepreneurs and laborers, she tells the history of the Central San Gabriel Valley (Baldwin Park, El Monte, La Puente) from a Latina/o/x perspective through a centralizing of foodways.
  • Natalie has provided digitization of historic phone directories in her hometown of Baldwin Park and continues to work with the local historical society to digitally preserve items
  • Making local history accessible in the San Gabriel Valley is an important part of her work. You can follow her social media project @writewithnat on Instagram to see how she carefully integrates digital humanities into her work.

Selected Publications

  • Book Reviews
    • Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America by Mark Padoongpatt. Journal of Asian American Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, June 2019. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/728881
    • Mexican Origin Foods, Foodways and Social Movements- Decolonial Perspectives, eds. Devon Peña, Luz Calvo, Pancho McFarland, and Gabriel R. Valle. Aztlan, Vol. 44, No. 1, Spring 2019. http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/files/44.1_TOC.pdf
    • Food Across Borders, eds. Matt Garcia, E. Melanie DuPuis and Don Mitchell. Gastronomica, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter 2018. https://gcfs.ucpress.edu/content/18/4/104.abstract

Courses

  • Teacher’s Assistant
    • Introduction to Chicana/o Studies
    • Chicana/o Studies: Social Structure and Contemporary Issues
    • Chicana/o Studies: Theory
    • Chicana/o Studies: Space, Place, and Race